A Dark Star Fades

By Niall O'Dowd

THE word in Belfast last week was that the Reverend Ian Paisley was back in the hospital with an undisclosed illness. Doubtless there are many on both sides of the political spectrum and in the two governments who secretly hope that it is nothing minor.

It has been known for some time that the Big Man, who has dominated Northern Ireland’s political life for over four decades, has not been all that well. There has certainly been a physical deterioration, and he speaks softer and with less impact these days.

During an earlier hospitalization there were rumors spreading of his imminent demise and of cancer. He came back, however, perhaps not as robustly but nonetheless in complete control of his party.

There are many of his opponents who have come to believe, not completely in a humorous way, that it may take a stake through the heart at the crossroads at midnight to remove the most formidable figure perhaps in the history in Ulster unionism.

In that sense Paisley is the Irish Castro, a figure who still casts a huge shadow decades after most of his contemporaries on all sides have sought the quiet places where old warriors go.

He has earned grudging respect for his longevity, even from his opponents. His message has always been unwavering and unaltered.

Ulster is being sold out and he is the only savior. It is a simple message, but it nonetheless incredibly effective.

Paranoid about their place in the world to begin with, many Unionists long for the security blanket that Paisley’s screed offers them, however illusionary it is.

Incredibly, late in his life he has become the establishment he railed so long against. There is no one else in Unionist politics to take up cudgels against, no one that he can accuse of orchestrating a sellout. There is only himself, 78 years old, in fading health, with a message growing increasingly frayed at the edges.

He may indeed cast a glance from time to time across the aisle at another long lived political leader, Gerry Adams, who in many ways has also become the establishment among Nationalists that he once challenged.

There is one key difference, however. Adams has adapted his political message in an attempt to forge an historic political settlement. He has sought compromise and forged unlikely alliances in pursuit of the greater goal. There are few politicians who can match him for sheer commitment to finding a solution.

Ian Paisley would never be accused of that. In John Kerry parlance he is not a “flip-flopper.” He would be most proud of believing he speaks in the same unvarnished truths that were held back at the beginning of the Reformation all those centuries ago.

In most other societies Paisley would be an irrelevance. After all, here is a man who recently showed up outside a rugby game protesting that it was being held on a Sunday, a man who very publicly declares the Pope the anti-Christ and denounced him in the European Parliament as such, leading to much head-scratching.

In Northern Ireland, however, he is considered a hero by many. Now in his twilight years, he has one more opportunity to sink the ship of compromise as it heads towards shore.

There are those who believe his influence has now passed and that he is merely repeating history as farce. It is a dangerous assumption.

Paisley’s bark may have softened, but his bite is as effective as ever. He has just dispatched another Ulster Unionist leader, this time David Trimble, to the scrap heap where he joins James Molyneaux, Captain Terence O’Neill, James Chichester Clark and Harry West as leaders who could never withstand the withering criticism of Paisley and the catch cry of sell-out that the Big Man used so well.

Now we have reached the crucial crossroads in the North, and Paisley remains the greatest stumbling block to progress. There are younger pretenders in his camp now, some of whom may harbor sacrilegious ideas of actually sharing power with Sinn Fein, the other great anti-Christ in Paisley’s world.

Whether they are able to finally convince or outmaneuver the Big Man on this issue may well decide the future of the peace process.